The Abduction: A Novel (19 page)

FORTY-TWO

“
SO NOW THEY
think Carver could have something to do with it?”

Holly shook her head. “That’s putting it too strongly. They’re professionals – they accept it might be nothing more than a coincidence. But they’ve asked me to find out who else he shared his reports with besides Sagese.”

“Hmm.” Gilroy pushed himself up from the table he was propping himself against and took a turn around the classroom, his hands in his pockets. “So the implication is, far from it being an anti-American terror group behind the kidnap, it could be some murky scheme we’re pursuing amongst ourselves.”

She’d updated Gilroy on her abortive date with Daniele, but it was this new initiative from Piola and Kat he seemed most interested in.

“Could it?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t see how.” He looked at her. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t investigate. Hopefully, as you say, it will be nothing more than due diligence.”

She sighed. “But what I don’t see is how I actually do this. It’s not like I can just walk up to Colonel Carver and demand to interrogate him.”

“No. But there are two parts to this hypothesis of theirs. One is that Carver himself could be the link. The other is that Mia wasn’t just picked at random. That might be your way in – tell Carver you’re trying to establish why the kidnappers went to such extraordinary lengths to target
her
.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“And the next question,” he continued, “will be what to do if you find anything.”

“Sir?”

“Even if you find something that vindicates their approach, it may not be in America’s interest to pass it back to the Carabinieri. If it were something that discredits us, for example, and could thus put troops’ lives at risk…” He paused. “It might be best for the Carabinieri to feel that this isn’t a particularly relevant or fruitful avenue of investigation, at least for now.”

She saw what he was telling her, and was silent.

He nodded. “In other words, Holly, you should give your friends the impression that the lead Mazzanti has furnished them with – that the USAF itself could somehow be involved with the kidnap – is a dead end. Whilst, of course, continuing to pursue it to the very best of your ability. Can you do that?”

“I think so,” she said hesitantly. “If I can bring anything I find back to you.”

“Of course. Share everything with me, and meanwhile let’s be cautious who else we speak to.”

As she turned to go, he said, “One other thing… How was it that a full colonel of the Carabinieri came to be investigating the break-in at Dal Molin in the first place?”

“Oh…” She told him about the skeleton. “It seems like that was the only unpredictable thing in the whole operation,” she added. “When Mazzanti sent the protestors into the construction site, he could never have known they’d come across something like that.”

“Indeed.” He rubbed his hand thoughtfully over his chin. “If I was Colonel Piola, I’d be looking very closely at that.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He seemed surprised at her question. “Because whoever’s behind this operation, they clearly like and expect things to go exactly to plan.”

FORTY-THREE

AFTER THE WALLING
, they let her sleep for a few hours. She woke with her shoulders still sore and her arms covered in bruises where Harlequin had grabbed her.

She unzipped the jumpsuit and, experimentally, felt her back with the tips of her fingers. Nothing seemed to be broken. Like all the techniques she’d been subjected to so far, it seemed to have been carefully calibrated so as not to cause any lasting damage.

It was that – the considered nature of what they were doing – that almost made it worse.

The door chain rattled. It was Harlequin, bringing her food. It was real food today, or what passed for it here: a pastry and a can of Sprite. Her reward, she supposed, for enduring the walling he had given her last night.

“You’re
evil
,” she hissed as he put the tray down, no longer caring if she angered him.

“What was done to you less than half a dozen times would be done to a real detainee a hundred times or more in one session,” he said calmly. “And with a great deal more violence.”

“A real detainee could confess. Then it would stop.”

“Only if they were guilty.”

“America doesn’t do this to people who aren’t guilty.”

“Please, Mia,” he scoffed. “You’re a clever girl. Today you are understandably upset, but if you just think for a moment you will realise what a stupid statement that is. There are currently one hundred and sixty-four detainees in Guantanamo alone who have been interrogated –
tortured
– for over a decade. Yet in all that time they haven’t provided the authorities with any evidence which would allow them to be tried in a court of law. Are they innocent? Or are the interrogation methods they have been subjected to ineffective? It must be one or the other.”

“The President’s already said he’s going to close Guantanamo.”

“Oh, yes.” Behind the mask, she could tell he was smiling bitterly. “The 2009 Executive Order. We had such high hopes of Obama, you know, when he first took office. He said that Guantanamo would be closed by January 22nd, 2010. Such a precise date! You’d think if they were just a few hours late, there’d be trouble. But it’s still open. And do you know why?”

She shook her head.

“Because he wasn’t actually going to give the Guantanamo prisoners a trial, let alone release them. He was just going to transfer them to other American jails, but without legal rights. Even your Congress baulked at that. And so they stay in Guantanamo. In limbo.” He leaned closer to her. “A decade, Mia. Think of that. There are people in that prison who were younger than you when they were taken, and who have now spent nearly a third of their lives in that place. Can you imagine their despair?”

“Yes,” she said with quiet emphasis. “I can.”

He stopped at that.

“Besides, America has the right to defend itself,” she added.

He recovered. “And so do we.”

“But if you accept that principle—” she began.

He stood up. “This is all very amusing, Mia, but it isn’t you we need to convince, and I have things to do. You have one hour before we need to begin.”

He took the tray and left. She noticed that there had been, once again, a tiny flash of anger – not when she swore at him, but when she’d challenged him.

He likes the sound of his own voice
, she thought.
To preach. Not to debate.

Interesting.

FORTY-FOUR

HOLLY WENT TO
see Colonel Carver, saying that she needed to update him on Major Elston’s condition.

It was only partly a pretext. Being told that his daughter was being walled had devastated the major, and hearing that her presence at Club Libero was now all over the papers as well had finished him off. Holly hadn’t seen him break down before – indeed, the granite-hard military demeanour was so much a part of his character that when he collapsed, sobbing, she’d become genuinely alarmed.

“At one point he grabbed me by the arms,” she reported to Carver. “He was saying over and over, ‘I’ll give them anything. Do anything, whatever they want.’”

“Hmm.” Carver was thoughtful. “And the Italians? Are they any closer to finding her?”

Holly shook her head. “Negative, sir. The investigation is getting bigger every day. But the kidnappers don’t appear to have made a single slip since they started.” She hesitated. “One thing the Carabinieri
have
established is that one of the protestors, Mazzanti, is actually working for us.”

Carver seemed unperturbed. “I thought that might come out eventually. And if the Carabinieri know about it today, doubtless it will be in the Italian media tomorrow.”

Holly said nothing.

“Well, I don’t imagine anyone will be very shocked to discover that we took steps to protect our installation. The fact that the group our asset infiltrated is also behind this kidnap simply proves how dangerous they are. If anything, we’ll probably take flak for not having
more
people on the inside.”

“If that group
are
behind the kidnap, sir.”

He looked at her sharply.

“There’s a body of opinion within the Carabinieri that’s starting to wonder if Azione Dal Molin could be some kind of false trail,” she explained.

“By who? And why, for Chrissake?”

“I don’t believe they’ve worked that out yet, sir. But they’re wondering who Mazzanti’s reports went to. Besides yourself, of course.”

Holding her gaze, he said, “I kept the distribution extremely restricted, Second Lieutenant. Sagese at Transformation. Mike Pownall in Site Security. One or two staff officers here who report directly to me. That’s it.”

She mentally filed that answer away for future examination. “Then it may be something quite different. Has Major Elston’s unit ever been involved in any controversial actions – anything that might make him or Mia a particular target?

“Not that I’m aware of. Recon Red is the 173rd’s RSTA.”

Translated out of military-speak, Carver was saying that Elston commanded a company of around eighty paratroopers with special responsibility for reconnaissance, scouting and target acquisition behind enemy lines. “He’s a proper fighting man,” Carver added unnecessarily. “And a damn good one.”

Holly understood him to mean that, as a mere liaison officer, and a woman at that, she was neither. “That’s what I told them.”

“Told who?”

“You know what these Italians are like, sir – they just love their bureaucracy. The Carabinieri want to interview all of Major Elston’s troop, to see if they can find some special reason why his daughter might have been the one to get kidnapped. My worry is, if we let them start down that path it’ll divert resources from the real investigation. But equally, we don’t want to look like we’re telling them how to do their job.”

“I’m not having the men interrogated as if they were the criminals,” Carver said. “Besides, Recon Red’s on a training run, up at Asiago. If I start pulling troops off their deployments just to satisfy some
carabiniere
with a fancy hat and a red stripe down his pants, pretty soon my whole battalion will have ground to a halt.”

“Maybe I could do it, sir – just get a few quick details, put it all into some official-looking files. That should be enough to keep them off our backs.”

“Very well. But don’t interrupt the men’s schedule.”

“Roger that, sir. I can drive up to Asiago, no problem.”

“And keep me informed about Major and Mrs Elston.” Carver nodded to show she was dismissed.

When she’d gone, he sat for a moment, thinking. Then he lifted the handset on his desk.

“We may have a problem,” he said, when the other person answered.

FORTY-FIVE

KAT WAS GOING
through the most recent film, the one of Mia being walled. It had occurred to her that, if it was an impromptu response to the threat of Carnivia being closed down, the kidnappers might have made some small slip-up or mistake that they hadn’t in the others.

Piola came to stand by her shoulder. “Anything?”

She shook her head, frustrated. “Although there is a curious discrepancy between the titles and the film.” She wound back to the very first title. “Do you see here, how it says, ‘The detainee remains nude’? And then we see Mia, and she isn’t. She’s wearing those overalls.”

“Which is correct?”

“The caption is an accurate quote from the CIA memos. So why give her clothing? The whole point of the kidnap seems to be to sensationalise the CIA approach. It seems strange that they wouldn’t take the opportunity to get a few extra ratings.”

“Maybe she’d done something to earn a privilege. Or maybe they just got tired of humiliating her.”

“Which is interesting in itself,” she said thoughtfully. “It suggests they’re not quite as ruthless as the people they’re copying.” She looked up at him. “Did you speak to Sagese?”

“Yes.” He sounded just as frustrated as she was. “Stonewalled.”

The Transformation director had been no more cooperative than he had the last time they’d met, on the morning of the protestors’ break-in. Flanked by Costruttori Conterno lawyers, he claimed to have done no more than skimmed Mazzanti’s reports. Operational decisions about site security matters, he said, were entirely up to the military.

The lawyers had been more interested in making sure that the Carabinieri weren’t entertaining any notion of giving in to the kidnappers’ demands. Any attempt to do so, they emphasised, would result in an immediate claim for millions of euros’ worth of damages from the construction firm. They had already sought, and received, assurances from the very highest levels of government that the existing policy of not making concessions to hostage-takers would be rigidly adhered to.

Piola had looked Sagese in the eye. “Just to be clear, if it came down to a straight choice between holding a referendum and leaving Mia to rot, you’d prefer her to rot?”

“But it isn’t a straight choice, is it, Colonel?” Sagese had replied blandly. “There’s a third option, which is that the Carabinieri do their job and find her. And in answer to your question, it doesn’t matter how innocuous a kidnapper’s demands appear: if you give in to them, next day you’ll have a dozen more kidnaps on your hands.”

Piola had cut his losses then and stood up. But as he was leaving, Sagese stopped him.

“By the way, Colonel, I thought I should give you this.”

He was holding out a small red document. The cover bore a crest and the words “
Penyблuкa Cpбuja: Пacoщ
”.

“The excavator driver left it behind when he absconded,” he added. “I wasn’t sure what to do with it after my men found it, so it’s been sitting here in my safe.”

Piola took it. It was a Serbian passport, in the name of Tarin Krasnaki. That fitted with Krasnaki having forged work papers; whereas Albania was sufficiently advanced in the EU membership process for its citizens to work in Italy legally, Serbia wasn’t. But it seemed strange that the driver would have left such an important document behind.

Remembering the passport now, Piola took it out of his pocket and handed it to Kat. “Open a Missing Person file for this man, will you? I doubt we’ll find him, but you never know.”

A voice cut across the hubbub of the operations room. “There’s another film.”

All the Carabinieri present gathered round one of the biggest screens. Someone clicked “Play”, and the room went quiet.

The film began with one of the now familiar captions:

ACCORDING TO THE USA, STRESSFUL STANDING IS NOT TORTURE.

Then it cut to a shot of Mia, sitting on a chair. Her wrists were shackled, and she was wearing the orange jumpsuit, but otherwise there was no indication that she was being mistreated. More captions appeared, fading on and off over the image:

JUDGE FOR YOURSELF.

IN RESPONSE TO THE COWARDLY ATTEMPT BY THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT TO CENSOR OUR EXPOSÉ, WE APPEAL DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE OF ITALY TO SUPPORT OUR DEMAND FOR A FREE AND FAIR REFERENDUM.

FOR THIS REASON WE WILL NO LONGER USE THE STATE-OWNED AND US-INFLUENCED MEDIA AS INTERMEDIARIES. FROM NOW ON, WE SPEAK DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE.

AT 9 P.M. TONIGHT MIA ELSTON WILL NOT BE TORTURED.

WATCH IT LIVE ON CARNIVIA.

The Carnivia URL appeared. Then the screen went blank. That was all.

“What does it mean?” someone asked.

“It means they’ve changed their tactics,” another officer replied. “It’s like a film trailer. They’re drumming up ratings in advance.”

“It seems the kidnappers are setting the agenda, yet again,” Kat said quietly to Piola.

He nodded. “Have you heard from Holly?”

“She left me a message.”

“And?”

“She’s spoken to Carver. There are no further leads but she’ll keep us informed. She sounded like she didn’t hold out much hope.” As she spoke, she became aware that they were being glanced at. Doubtless, the news that the two of them were talking again had gone round the building within minutes. “Would you rather have this conversation somewhere else?”

He brushed the suggestion aside. “I’ve nothing to hide. What’s next?”

“Well, there’s one place we haven’t really investigated yet.”

“Where’s that?”

“Inside Carnivia.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that CNAIPIC’s territory?”

“Technically, perhaps, but it seems to me that anything to do with Carnivia is going to require Daniele Barbo’s cooperation. And I don’t suppose, having been detained without charge, that he’s going to be in the mood to assist CNAIPIC very much.”

“You think he’ll talk to you?”

“I think it’s worth a try.”

As Piola went back to his desk, his phone rang. “Pronto?”

“Ispettore Marino, from the Padua Polizia,” a voice said. “Is this Colonel Piola?”

Piola agreed that it was.

“This may seem a strange question, Colonel, but do you have any connection with a Dottoressa Ester Iadanza?”

“Dottora,” Piola corrected automatically. “She calls herself ‘Dottora’. And yes, she’s involved in an investigation of mine. Why?”

Inspector Marino’s voice was guarded. “And Professore Cristian Trevisano?”

“Him too.” Piola was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. “Why do you ask, Ispettore?”

“They’re both dead,” Marino said bluntly. “It appears he shot her, then turned the gun on himself. I’m calling because you left a message on her phone. I thought perhaps she was a ‘person of interest’, as we say.”

“She was a forensic archaeologist,” Piola said heavily. He had a sudden memory of her shapely rear descending that ladder, how he had looked up admiringly and then wished he hadn’t. She had been clever, passionate and alive, and now she was dead. He sat down, suddenly sick to his stomach. “She was removing a skeleton from the Dal Molin air base for us. And Trevisano – he was someone I spoke to about the identification.”

“Did you know they were lovers?”

Piola thought back. Of course, it had been Dr Iadanza who’d recommended the professor to him. But there had been no hint that they were romantically involved. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. They were found in his apartment, in bed. Of course, given the presence of the gun, we can’t rule out rape, but it seems highly unlikely – there was a bottle of wine by the bed, as well as a bowl of olives that had been eaten, and the stones put to one side. My hypothesis is, after they’d made love she told him she was leaving him, and he couldn’t take it.” Marino’s voice was fading in and out, and he was a little breathless: Piola guessed he was walking briskly as he told him all this, probably towards a bar for his lunch. “Anyway, I thought I should give you a call, as a professional courtesy.”

“Thank you. I have to tell you, Ispettore, I doubt it happened as you describe. They were neither of them temperamental types.”

“Well, who can say.” Marino’s voice was neutral. “When it comes to affairs of the heart, we all do strange things.”

“But you’re collecting more evidence? You’ll look for any signs they were both murdered?”

There was a small pause. “Why do you say that? Was your investigation one that could have placed them in danger?”

“Not on the face of it, no,” Piola admitted. He’d asked them to try to identify the missing partisan, he recalled, the one who’d survived the shooting of Max Ghimenti and the others. And in the message she left, Dr Iadanza had said they’d found something interesting. But her tone had been relaxed, with no hint that she might have considered herself to be in jeopardy. “I think you should investigate further, all the same.”

Marino’s voice became a notch frostier. “I don’t know how you do things in the Carabinieri, Colonel, but in the Polizia we try to look at all the available evidence and make a professional judgement before spending taxpayers’ money on unnecessary investigations. The team looking at the scene, I might add, were all extremely competent.”

“Of course,” Piola said. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

“We’ve had our leave cancelled in any case, so that we can concentrate on this American teenager’s abduction.” Marino paused significantly. “A Carabinieri investigation initially, I understand.”

“Indeed. We’re all very grateful for the Polizia’s assistance,” Piola lied. “Can I take a look at it?”

“At what?”

“The professor’s apartment.”

“It’s a crime scene, Colonel. We can’t have you contaminating it, can we? I’ll send you the photographs.”

He rang off before Piola had time to point out that, firstly, he could hardly contaminate it, since there were to be no more investigations, and secondly, it was curious that Marino was still calling it a crime scene, when he had just been at pains to point out that they were no longer bothering to treat it as any such thing.